Are You Using a Hammer to Crack an Egg?

Ninja Writer’s Academy: Writing Sex and Violence

In our Facebook group this week, there’s been a lot of talk about sensitivity and censorship and trigger warnings. I thought it might be interesting to look at those things for this week’s Ninja Writer’s Academy post.

Here’s the dictionary definition of a trigger warning:

Noun: a statement at the start of a piece of writing, video, etc., alerting the reader or viewer to the fact that it contains potentially distressing material (often used to introduce a description of such content)

It is common to find a trigger warning at the start of a story or article that mentions potentially traumatic topics such as violence, rape, or grief so that a reader can make an informed decision about reading.

My personal take is that I don’t need a trigger warning for fiction. I know my personal sensitivity levels pretty well. I don’t like to read books that make me cry and I really don’t like to read about cancer. Everyone has their own limits. Those are mine.

I can usually tell from the description on the back of a book if that book is about cancer.

I personally have such an aversion to reading a book with a sad ending that I have developed a habit of reading the end of a book first. I also look up spoilers for suspect movies.

Trigger warnings are what they are. I don’t pay much attention to them — but that mostly says to me that they aren’t for me. They don’t bother me. Based on the discussion in our group, they do bother some people. If someone who has something to add to difficult conversations only feels comfortable saying them with a trigger warning, then I say warn away. I’d rather have the warning then a silenced writer.

What bothers me much more is something that I think goes hand in hand here: gratuitousness.

Here’s another dictionary definition, this one for gratuitous.

Adjective: uncalled for; lacking good reason; unwarranted.

Violence, sex, or any other potentially traumatic thing, can be powerful in a story. It can be life-changing for the reader and the writer both. I can still vividly remember reading a book called Don’t Hurt Laurie when I was in late elementary school, about a girl who was being abused at home. I was so enthralled with it that I checked it out several times from my school library, and caused the librarian some worry. A few years later, I was equally as moved by the Flowers in the Attic series. My own work deals with traumas from my past and my family — parents in prison, substance abuse, mental illness.

I’ve also experienced some stories that instead of shifting something inside me, just made me angry. The violence or sex or whatever felt gratuitous — like it was only included to make me cry. That feels manipulative. (Trigger warning: SPOILERS!) The kid dying at the end of Pay it Forward and Meg Ryan’s character dying at the end of the movie City of Angels come to mind.

Someone in our Facebook discussions wrote that sometimes violence is used to show that a villain is villainous. My first reaction to that was: that’s lazy writing. Let’s think about the most villainous of villains. Darth Vader. He’s a violent dude. He annihilates an entire planet. His own daughter’s entire planet. But before that happens, it’s his disconnectedness and coldness that show us his nature. It is Vader’s fall from grace, evident even in the first-released Star Wars movie, that cements him as a tragic villain. We would know he is cruel without the violence — although the violence moves the story forward and doesn’t feel gratuitous (at least to me.)

And the thing we remember most about Darth Vader, the moment that’s the crux of his entire character, isn’t a moment of violence. It’s a moment of discovery when we learn that he is Luke’s father.

This week, think about the violence, sex, or other intense parts of your book, and analyze whether or not they are necessary to your story or if they are gratuitous. Are you using those moments to manipulate emotion in your reader? If you are, how can you go deeper?

Here’s your homework this weekend, Ninja!

Are you in this week? Leave a comment here and let me know.

Deepen your work by getting rid of gratuitousness. Identify scenes of violence or sex or other intensity and analyze whether you’re using them only to manipuilate reader emotions or to tell the reader about your character, instead of showing.

Come show your work on Facebook. It can help to get feedback from other writers.

Come hang out with me during office hours.I’ll post the thread in the morning on Sunday 4/15/18 and answer all your questions live for an hour. I’ll email Sunday morning to remind you and let you know when the live hour willi happen. Make sure you click the link below to join the mailing list so you get the email about the time of the office hours.

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